Jen Psaki has conservatives pinned down pat: NASCAR fans
Nobody will lecture you more about "stereotypes" than a leftist, but on the side, leftists like to except themselves.
That brings us to Jen Psaki, speaking of the Biden administration's bid to get conservatives to "overcome" their COVID vaccine hesitancy.
According to a report in CNBC:
The White House is using alternative methods to reach Americans who remain reluctant to get a Covid-19 vaccine: NASCAR, CMT, the country music television channel, and shows like "Deadliest Catch," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
"We've run PSAs on the 'Deadliest Catch,' we're engaged with NASCAR and country nusic TV. We're looking for a range of creative ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities," Psaki said.
According to reports, white conservative and Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is at 30%, now topping that of African-Americans, who were reported as the most vaccine-hesitant earlier, with 52% in that category in December, 24% now.
So now the Bidenites have got their number, and they're off to the NASCAR track to preach the virtues of the vaccine to all those supposed conservative rednecks staring at that redneck sport of racing cars out there. That and their country music, too.
When a leftist thinks of a conservative, or a dreaded Trump voter, NASCAR is what springs to mind.
Nothing against that entertainment, of course, and many conservatives do enjoy it, but they've got quite a stereotype of just who a conservative might be.
For the record, quite a few of the most vaccine-hesitant Trump voters are middle-class, have college degrees, and don't know a lot about either NASCAR or country music. What's more, NASCAR fans are not necessarily Republican or troglodytes as Democrats read it, having higher education, marriage, and income levels than generally reported. Those entertainments are there for those who enjoy them, and there are all kinds who do, but to peg it as "conservative" tells you a lot about how Team Biden actually "thinks."
Psychology Today reports that the average Trump voter is one of several varieties of narrow-minded bigot, all distrustful of outsiders. However, they also cite a study pointing to an average annual income of $72,000.
Pew Research reports that in the 2016 election, 29% of Trump voters were college-educated, and another 37% had some college, forming a 66%, or two thirds, majority of Trump voters. Other studies and reports say that Trump lost ground among college-educated voters in 2020, which is quite possibly true, but they also neglect to mention that Trump gained significant ground among Black and Latino voters. None of that points to NASCAR fandom as leftists understand it.
As for NASCAR fans, well, here's a 2018 marketer advertiser breakdown of who the average NASCAR fan might be:
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series viewership peaked at 5.8 million in the final quarter of the race. Despite declining numbers, NASCAR's fan base is estimated to include 75 million consumers.
The NASCAR fan base makes up a diverse audience:
- 63% of the audience are male
- 20% are minorities
- 47% are between the ages of 18 and 44
- 15% of NASCAR fans live in the Northeast, 25% live in the Midwest, 40% in the South and 20% in the West
- 54% of NASCAR consumers make $50,000 or more
None of this suggests "conservative" as leftists read it.
Here's another thing with NASCAR: in the past few years, the leaders of this outfit have gone wokester, and undoubtedly lost at least some conservative fans, as has happened with other sports where the leadership gets woke and goes broke. NASCAR has been as bad as the rest of them. While many conservatives still enjoy NASCAR anyway (it's hard to give up a sport if you really love it to a tenuous boycott), that doesn't raise NASCAR's brand as more "trustworthy" to conservatives. How that will help the cause of vaccine hesitancy among conservatives is an open question.
Joe Biden in fact always gets his "messaging" off target. He recently made a fool of himself by taking out radio advertisements in Central America to discourage would-be illegal aliens not to make the journey to an illegal border crossing up north, missing the reality that most illegal migrants use social media, not radio, as their cue to begin their illegal journeys.
He's doing the same thing with conservatives, trying to achieve his vaccination goal by barking up the wrong tree, imagining that the average conservative is all about NASCAR races.
The most likely place to reach conservative vaccine skeptics is not at NASCAR, but at churches, according to this Pew study, same as had been done with the black community, which has since seen lower vaccine hesitancy rates.
The other thing that can be done is more important: answer serious questions about how safe these vaccines are, and explain just what all those sudden deaths after vaccines, and all those people catching COVID after getting vaccinated actually means. No answer — don't be surprised if conservatives might just want to wait before taking the vaccine. People don't want to be bee-essed on something like this.
More important still: dump the politicization of the Centers for Disease Control, with all its shifting narratives, including the worst of them: that it's OK for Black Lives Matter rioters to go out rioting and looting despite the risk of catching COVID, because, well, politics is more important. Its latest shifting narrative now is that vaccines don't work, and you need to wear your mask, probably forever. If that's the lovely message, why would anyone want to bother to get a vaccine? The politics of that is to extend the bureaucratic reach that has come to these bureaucrats from COVID, basically forever, and conservatives can see that even if leftists can't.
No wonder so many don't want to get the vaccine.
The Bidenites, though, are sure that conservatives are supposedly just sports simpletons, easily persuaded to vaccinate just by their outreach to their favored habitats.
Doesn't work that way.
The Bidenites now stand exposed as stereotypers of conservatives, imagining them to be mere NASCAR race fans easily persuaded by Bidenites showing up at their races and country music festivals, all dazzled by the Bidenites' call to take the vaccine. Maybe they can answer some questions instead.
Image: Logo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.